Okay, so, with your help, I totally derailed this thread with talk of major events in Doctor Who history. It seems some nutters among you want more of the same, so I'm clearly going to need some more help. This time, in a thread reserved for the purpose!

In the 2030s, as they examined the consequences of a Time Lord exceeding their natural regeneration allotment. She was one of the most popular Companions to date, because she was just that gorgeous, and funny too, but she and the 18th Doctor had an unfortunate lack of on-camera chemistry, and she was getting lots of other offers, so she only lasted for a single season, replaced by a cute dwarven pyromaniac reminiscent of Ace. Fandom looks back on the elven Companion as casting for sex appeal rather than fitting the role, causing bitter Matrix feuds between the Who fandom and other aficionados of stage and screen, because her post-Who roles were mostly award-winning classics.

"Current" Who is kind of a controversial re-branding period, after a vastly unpopular series of the Doctor as a tweed-suited ork. The series hired on the best writers in the industry to try to make this work, but the fans weren't interested in an ork Doctor, the great writing couldn't carry it, the Doctor regenerated in the series finale, and the writers that hadn't quit in disgust got canned. The handsome human Anglo-Saxon actor playing the 33rd Doctor is a bit dim, isn't working with the greatest writing staff, and has shifted to a more theatrically aggressive, almost two-fisted approach to saving the universe, which has long-term fans distressed. The ratings, though, have recovered over 80% of what they lost over the course of the last series, and the producers aren't going to argue with results!

QUOTE (CanRay @ Feb 6 2012, 08:41 AM)

The producers aren't arguing, but they're planning for the future. Some Paydata I got suggests that the next Doctor will be a Dwarf, they'll bring back said Elven Companion (Who is seriously slotted off that he time jumped without her when last seen!), and after a half-century, the Daleks will return!

Oh, and to sweeten the bill, they found another "Lost" episode! They're trying to restore it now from the poor storage conditions it suffered when it was in a Moscow bus station long-term storage locker since the 1960s. (Now that's some long term storage!).

QUOTE (Blitz66 @ Feb 6 2012, 05:22 PM)

CanRay, you've been slumming on the wrong fansites. The producers took all the race-centered risk they're going to with the ork Doctor, and it took them a while to work up to THAT after the first black Doctor, back in the early '60s. And reaction to THAT was overall positive, if a bit heated. How long do you think it's going to take them to have another non-human Doctor? I figure turn of the century, soonest.

I know the elf Companion's name turned up in the casting news, but they'd never bring back a big-time award-winning star like her as a full-time Companion. I'm pretty sure she'll be limited to a Christmas special, or a nostalgia episode. At the very most, three or four minor appearances as a plot-provider, throughout the next series.

I don't know how I feel about the return of the Daleks. They tend to get overused and increasingly poorly written when re-introduced. Maybe the fifty years off will turn out to have been good for them. We'll see!

As you can see, I've been riffing on other people's questions and ideas, so if you want more answers, I need more questions!

I've got a few questions of my own, for those of you more knowledgeable about Shadowrun history than I am, to give me some framework.

1) I assume that the BBC is run by one of the megacorps now. Is there a canon answer to "which megacorp owns the BBC, and as of when?" If not, best guesses?

2) The trid. When did it replace regular TV? Knowledge or best guess?

I'm working tonight, but my relative weekend starts after that, and I'll do some writing then. Until then, FEED ME!

EDIT: To clarify, I'm going to avoid making a whole lot of direct mention of the canon of the show itself, looking primarily at casting and production, and related implications.

London Sourcebook, page 59The BBC is partly funded by government, but mostly by direct sales of rights to its programs for overseas broadcasts, sales of spin off books and media products, and the like. This is a publi-service channel that is mostly devoted to news, current affairs, and a small number of "quality" programs (documentaries, drama, wildlife programs, educational programs). It has a reputation for accuracy and impartiality, but its funding does not permit it to cover major news stories with the speed and broad coverage of rival chanenels. The BBC runs two main channels, a news channel and BBC London.

QUOTE

Conspiracy Theories, page 88For more than one hundred and fifty years, the BBC has been doing its thing, and that thing has not changed a whole lot. Staid, dignified presentations of the news; tasteful costume dramas where major dramatic moments feature people raising their hands to their mouths in dismay; and footage of wildlife that runs while a calm voice describes a particular animal’s hunting and mating habits. Their programs tend to be high-minded, moderate, and accurate, which means they will never play a dramatic role in shaping the world.

"You're talking about that American show about the alien mage from outer space cybered by Ares who fights robots with his sonic gun? Do yourself a favor and watch the anime it's based on. Much better."

"You're talking about that American show about the alien mage from outer space cybered by Ares who fights robots with his sonic gun? Do yourself a favor and watch the anime it's based on. Much better."

If Dr Who still exists in 2070 that's what I expect it to be.

Likely, but unsatisfying to us fans. We like to think that something with as much inertia as Doctor Who has will continue on for the next sixty years.

This is what I managed to tap out tonight. Criticism? Comments? Happy thoughts?

To date, the BBC remains independent of corporate ownership. This has a number of influences on the Doctor Who series. First and foremost, of course, is the budget. Doctor Who has been relatively low-budget for a lot of its history, but the transition to 3D and the associated production costs really stretched the budget.

One of the things the BBC has done to bring in more revenue to cover costs is aggressive product placement. You see this a lot on the trid anyway, but Doctor Who pioneered certain approaches, and is famous for including products and logos in creative ways without disrupting the viewing experience. It’s often easy to tell when a major clothing brand is releasing new lines based on historical or cultural themes, for instance – there’s often an episode of Doctor Who set in an appropriate time and place, and the Doctor and his Companion are always dressed terribly well, and a number of the extras look suspiciously like runway models.

What this means, of course, is that the BBC has to be very careful of the themes that it explores, because today’s ideological stance might offend tomorrow’s sponsor. To make matters worse, there’s always the prospect of legal trouble, clever financial attacks, or punitive shadowruns that the BBC really lacks the resources to address. Therefore, you won’t find any generally anti-corp themes, and care is taken to avoid stepping on any megacorp’s toes directly.

That doesn’t mean, though, that the creators are in lockstep with the megacorps. There are certain differences in approach that tweak the collective nose of the rest of the entertainment industry. The Doctor Who approach to casting, by industry standards, shouldn’t work. The BBC prefers a natural look. While everyone else is focused on artificially idealized actors that all look vaguely like each other, the Doctor Who casting team has a policy of recruiting people with unique, natural features. Not a month goes by that some celeb or “news” source from another company doesn't remind us of the “ugly” people Doctor Who hires, but the audience loves it.

Not that the main Doctor Who cast is ever actually ugly. The fashion portion of the product placement revenue guarantees that. Sometimes the actor playing the Doctor is slim, sometimes muscular, but always tall and popular with the ladies. The Companions usually alternate, from pretty-and-wholesome-looking to pretty-and-edgy and back again.

For example, there’s the current Companion, played by Victoria Long. She’s a tall, blonde human with green eyes, fitting the ages-old stereotype of sidekick to the action movie style Doctor of James Andrews. The writing staff seems split on whether she should be the helpless, incompetent type constantly in need of rescue, or the plucky adventurer sidekick, and which one she is in a given episode varies by the specific writer. The fans didn’t like her at all. The actress, though, managed to do the impossible at a recent convention – she made jokes about her character’s inconsistency, funny and witty enough that she won the fans over, but not nasty enough to alienate the writers. Her character will be leaving the show in two more episodes, but she’s managed to secure a lot of popularity for herself.

Her replacement has already been cast, a twenty-year-old human by the name of Tanica Boot. She’s of spectacularly mixed heritage. Not much Native American to her, though she might convince you otherwise without saying a word – she’s covered in tribal tattoos and ornamentation, an updated look of the fashions of yesteryear. The only obvious ‘ware is an ornamented datajack behind her left ear. It looks like they’re definitely going action-heavy with this one, because rumor has that the character is going to be – get this – a shadowrunner. Might we hope for a serious, credible treatment of the subject? Early behind-the-scenes reports describe a lot of outdated slang and references to some of the more, ah, “cinematic” interpretations of the profession. So, no.

Fitting in when she travels to the past won’t be a problem, of course, because years ago the TARDIS gained the ability to make people ignore little things like a time-travelling elf or dwarf, or obvious cyberware in situations where such things are unknown. Body art, obviously, is even easier.

Of particular interest to some is Boot’s character’s relationship with her godfather, a troll mechanic and chop shop operator, presented as a sympathetic character. Doctor Who isn’t terribly popular with the Humanis Policlub crowd. One of the issues addressed most frequently in the show is metahuman rights, which it has been firmly supporting for decades. The one instance of the Doctor not being a human wasn’t received well, but the Companion being an elf isn’t uncommon any more, and on a few occasions, she’s been a dwarf. Orks and trolls are less well represented in the central cast, but they’re common in the supporting roles, almost always sympathetic and interesting. There have even been episodes centered on intelligent ghouls as tragic figures, but the fans don’t seem ready to embrace the rights-for-undead sentiment, and the producers aren’t pushing.

Speaking of casting and things the fans won’t accept, the casting of the Doctor is a sensitive issue. The ork Doctor, played by Victor Appleton, was an uncharacteristically bold move. The Doctor is usually British. Over the years, the fans have even bowed to the inevitable and accepted actors from the UCAS, CFS, even one from the CAS ended up winning everyone over… but when an actor from Brisbane was suggested for the role in ‘46, there was a literal riot in London.

Fitting in when she travels to the past won’t be a problem, of course, because years ago the TARDIS gained the ability to make people ignore little things like a time-travelling elf or dwarf, or obvious cyberware in situations where such things are unknown. Body art, obviously, is even easier.

I just have to jump in and say:

Have you ever actually watched the 1960s stuff? The TARDIS has been doing that for decades.

I could correct it, but honestly, the ability hasn't been mentioned in a number of years, and I'm not acting as an omniscient narrator. The ability was present in the early days, but had been forgotten, but now it's been regained. If somebody adds this to their personal wikis, like the previous material, feel free to add a correction via Shadowtalk.

I could correct it, but honestly, the ability hasn't been mentioned in a number of years, and I'm not acting as an omniscient narrator. The ability was present in the early days, but had been forgotten, but now it's been regained. If somebody adds this to their personal wikis, like the previous material, feel free to add a correction via Shadowtalk.

The Dr. Who/MLP crossover is still a major debate and debacle in crossover fiction that's been allowed as canon in fictional universes the world over. Even in the 2070s you have people arguing over it. Which just goes to show that people on the Matrix really do have way too much time on their hands.

The Dr. Who/MLP crossover is still a major debate and debacle in crossover fiction that's been allowed as canon in fictional universes the world over. Even in the 2070s you have people arguing over it. Which just goes to show that people on the Matrix really do have way too much time on their hands.

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